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Why China will not address the grievances of Tibetans and Uyghurs

By Tenzin Nyinjey

Tenzin Nyinjey is a former editor of the Tibet Journal. File photo/Photographer unknown

The recent ethnic violence in “China’s Xinjiang” province has destroyed the Chinese government’s popular myth that it has brought development and progress to the so-called minority areas.

Like the 2008 unrest in Tibet, the peaceful demonstration in “Xinjiang”, which later turned violent, was brutally suppressed by the Chinese authorities. As expected, instead of addressing the underlying issues such as the resentment felt from the marginalisation of ethnic Uyghurs due to the Chinese government’s misguided economic policies, and the suppression of Uyghur cultural and religious identity, China blamed the Uyghur exile associations, primarily the World Uighur Congress and its head Rabiya Kadeer, of fomenting and instigating the violence.

All of this makes it clear that the Chinese government is either ignorant of the real issues plaguing East Turkistan, or more likely is unwilling to take up its share of responsibility and redress the grievances of the Uyghur people, who, like the Tibetans, have been subjected to many years of colonial domination and oppression.

For those of us who are blessed to live in free societies, we wonder why the Chinese government doesn’t acknowledge its own misguided policies and resolve the crisis triggered by them. We might ask why the Chinese government fails to understand and accept a reality as plain as the nose on our face. If we were Chinese leaders, we would simply dismantle the calculated policy of encouraging Chinese migration to the so-called minority areas, and give these minorities at least a semblance of cultural and religious autonomy, short of complete independence. For observers it is as simple as that.

However, the reality is much more complicated and difficult than this.

The reason why Chinese leaders don’t think this way lies in the basic foundation on which China justified its brutal subjugation and invasion of countries like Tibet and East Turkistan in the first place — that the people inhabiting these territories are ‘barbarians’ in need of ‘civilisation’ and ‘progress’. They seem to really believe their own rhetoric, that China has ‘brought material progress’ and ‘cultural civilisation’ to these countries.

This stated myth of “mission civilisation”, among others, has been perpetuated among the larger Chinese population for decades by the incessant Chinese government propaganda machine. Like all popular myths, and because it is easier, it has been accepted by the majority of the current Chinese population. Thus, China has legitimacy in the eyes of its people to hold on to these former independent countries.

Acknowledging its failed policies in Tibet and East Turkistan would deconstruct its own myth of bringing “progress and civilisation” to the so-called minority areas, thus undermining the very foundation on which the concept of the unity of People’s Republic of China, composing of the so-called 56 different nationalities, including Tibetans and Uyghurs, is based. The only alternative, as such, is state repression of the protests, rather than addressing the genuine grievances of Tibetans and Uyghurs.

However, the significant question is how long China can perpetuate this myth? In an age of economic globalisation and the internet, suppressing true information has become almost impossible. Growing numbers of thinking Chinese are already questioning their government’s version of the story, and starting to reflect that the real causes of ethnic problems in the so-called minority areas lie in their government’s policy of forcing the completely resistant Tibetans and Uyghurs into the larger Chinese population. Given the writings on Tibet of Chinese intellectuals like Wang Lixiong, it seems the day will not be far when the rest of the Chinese people will come to realise that the China they are so proud of is actually a brutal coloniser, and that Tibetans and Uyghurs have every right to be free and live in independent countries.

This realisation of the truth among the Chinese that Tibetans and Uyghurs also have the right to be free and resist violent foreign occupation, as the Chinese themselves did when they were subjugated by the West and the Japanese, is the gravest threat confronting the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and the only hope of greater freedoms for both the Chinese and the people it forcibly colonised, such as the Tibetans and Uyghurs.

China will, therefore, try to do everything possible to suppress this truth. Our responsibility at this time in history is to make sure that this grim truth is not buried under the ashes of very real people!

Copyright © 2009 Tibet Sun

Published in Tibet Sun